Diamond for Solid State Lasers?
Although the idea of a diamond laser was popularized in the James Bond motion picture: “Diamonds are Forever”, there is nothing particularly unique about the diamond material that would make it inherently vastly superior for laser applications and diamond is an exceptional difficult crystal to produce synthetically. Pure diamond isn’t suitable anyhow as a lasing medium but could be a host (like YAG can be a host) for doping with the actual lasing ion. However, there are to my knowledge, no commercial lasers using a diamond host material, though as the cost of synthetic diamond has decreased, it may appear as a heatsink due to its high thermal conductivity, strength, and other desirable physical properties. (From: A. E. Siegman” (siegman@stanford.edu).) I also have a vague memory that maybe there was a diamond solid state laser doped with Cr or Fe or a RE at some point way back, but I’m not sure about that, and you’ll have to do the digging in some of the standard handbooks of laser tra
